Houston News

Many Texas School Kids At Disadvantage

As you get your kids ready to go back to school, a new study shows many children in the state are falling behind, and the reasons aren’t necessarily what you think they are.

The study conducted by the University of Texas is raising eyebrows, especially of those of the people that did the study, like UT's Julian Vasquez Heilig.

“Not only are students segregated by race, ethnicity, economic disadvantage and English language learner status, but in those schools they are more likely to be in lower performing schools,” he told KTRH. “Those schools are more than forty times more likely to be low performing in the accountability system across the state.”

Debbie Radcliffe of the Texas Education Agency told KTRH they are working on the problem.

“One of the things we’ve done is with our new accountability system we are grading schools in part on whether they are closing the achievement gap between minority groups and the overall student population,” she explained.

But Vasquez Heilig says teachers are sometimes part of the problem.

“More than half of teachers in schools are now alternatively certified. That means once you’ve had thirty hours of any sort of training you can be in a classroom that next week,” Vasquez Heilig explained.

RAdcliffe says recruiting good teachers is an issue.

“Some districts have tried to address that problem by offering small bonuses to teachers to go to the harder school assignments,” Radcliffe told KTRH.

Radcliffe says as teachers get more experience they tend to move on to better schools around the state.